Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1887-01-29
The Tobacco Tax.
To the Chronicle.

To the Chronicle.
Yours is the homer OF being the first
Democratic Journal whose columns
have brought any relief for the unjust
ly burdened tobaceo-grower. Not only
have your own rare faculties published
suggestions for the beneftof the tobacco
grower, but your generous courtesy has
given publication to other valuable COM
munications for his relief. These facts
entitle you to the profoundest gratitude
OF all field workers in tobacco.
In the valuable communication from
your correspondent, "The Old Man, F"
the Bulls Eye was conferred, when he
said. There is not an overproduclion
OF tobacco. High taxes are destroying
its consumption" This declaration is
sustained by the Farmers Home Jour
nal where the tobacco manufacturers
are quoted saying that every reduction
has led to an increased consumption OF
leaf, OF from ten to fifteen per cent.
Now then under the present tax on
tobacco it is expedient for the toiler, in
its production, to understand how the
tax lessons spontaneously demand for his
staple and it is becoming also in the
user of it to know how it robs him
also.
At present the market quotations for
manufactured or leaf tobacco is not
above six cents, but the quotations for
manufactured tobacco, wholesale rates,
are twenty-five cents for the lowest
grade and seventy-five cents for the best
grade. Or an average Of so cents by
the wholesale and thus giving the re-
taller the usual profit on it of 80 PEI
cent, the cost to the consumer is "a
cents "all around"
Now remove this iniquitors tax and
the price may be advanced to the far.
mer TO eight cents, "all around" and
then the manufacturer can wholesale il
at twenty-iour cents and make so pei
cent and the retailer can retail it AT
thirty six cents and make so per cent
and thus the tobacco toilers will gel
more for the crop, by ten million and
the consumers will get it for less than
half what it now costs them. The
difference brings to the consumers the
value of 200 million OF pounds at 4C
cents pound which equals eighty mil
lion dollars year.
On these accounts it is impossible fol-
any man Of any degree of intelligence
to understand how any Doctor or Sur
geon, or Editor or Preacher, or Mer
chant or Mechanic, in the tobacco States
ctn support any man for any Fedora
Office who is opposed to the removal O
tobacco tax, or how any OF said business
men or consumers OF tobacco living out
side of Internal Revenue position Car
hesitate to demand the immediate re
peal of this felonious tax.
Remove this tax, fellow tobacco grow
ers, and your home demand will moi
only enlarge 10 to 20 per cent but viii
go up33 to 50 per cent. and with YOU
augmented home trade the foreign
demand will be forced to pay you no
as now 5or 6 cents but ten cents al
around. Let petitions follow thick anC
fast to this Congress for repeal of tn,
tobacco tax, from the tobacco states anC
cotton States and to each petition ap
pend the assurance that if they will no
remove it, the petitioners will elect mex
time men who will repeal it. Thinl
of it: the growers lose ten million
year and the consumer eighty million
a year for the government to get twenty
eight millions year, not one cent o
which it needs.
Al. w.
Trenton, Ky, Jan. q, 1887.